


Birthmarks

by femmetroublee (rushingdevotion)



Category: Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushingdevotion/pseuds/femmetroublee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A barrier between any of the four sisters: a ghost who didn't wish to stay, but whom they dragged along all the same."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthmarks

After the disapparition of Cecilia, Mary disappeared too.

In the neighbourhood we say disappearing because dying is such a strong word. The neighbours say: _the child is resting now_. _She needed a break from all the jittering in the house_. _Her mother probably had her smothered_. They dictate. This is the way it is. This is this way. They don't ask about the decomposition of things; they compose them, in rough strokes, and in the end these shatter to pieces of their own accord.

Our parents speak in whispers. We approach them and again silence. There is the stench of fear, they watch us sleep in our beds, where we still rest with our eyes open, waiting for them to sleep, careless. We are not Cecilia, we are not going to die because we want to, we are going to grow old and the fear they have of losing the dearest thing in the world is going to end up being useless. But who's to tell. Who's to tell them that after a nuclear bomb we can focus again in seeing if the ants are alive, or not. Or not.

 

 

Mary became ethereal.

With the pretence of joined lockers, I spyed on her between the fences, between the air and the warmth of the school corridors; the notebooks that fell to the floor and she picked up instantly; the remnants of food that she forgot and stenched throughout the day. I spyed on her in the same stockings, hair blond and sleek, the birthmark that she hid while she turned her head, the bitten fingernails.

Mary became ethereal. Her presence smelt of water, of dampness, of the smell of rain over the ground and, suddenly, of nothing. She faded, she walked. The stockings; a trip, the yellow stain over the heel, the shoes smaller than usual. Cecilia's shoes. In an instant I saw in her face the burden that the Lisbon girls bore until the last of days. I forgot the next morning. I thought I'd seen Cecilia sitting where the old fence was. I sought Mary in Mister Lisbon's class and he answered, saddened, that she was sick with a terrible diarrhea.

Mary would have died had she heard him.

Mary would have died.

 

 

—There's no need for you to talk to me.

As well as:

—There's no need to talk.

Or:

—I've known you for as long as I recall. And you needn't talk to me.

Anyhow, the same stockings. The shoes shrunken and borrowed without permission, an invisible barrier between Mary Lisbon and the whole world. A barrier between any of the four sisters: a ghost who didn't wish to stay, but whom they dragged along all the same.

 

 

Mary disappeared and the news kept talking about Cecilia.

"There is no need", somebody would have said as a rumour, confirming, trapping the few humanity Mary still retained in Cecilia's small shoes. Mary became Cecilia. The rest of the Lisbon girls too. Us, our parents, the same builders' strike by the cemetery.

And even then we were never her, not really. We knew by heart her _fate_ , or any which way the neighbours called it, the brilliant future she could have harboured and even, for the most idle, that she'd be a social activist allied to Greenland, or how ever was the name of that association that was against killing trees and whales.

We were never her, them.

 

 

You don't have to find out either, but we all died a little when we realised we too could die. And we fled. Right after the Lisbons, we all fled. We go back from time to time, we pass by the houses intent on not staying, on fleeing again before the ship wrecks, and there's Cecilia, with the same dress, the same birthmark on her cheek, barefoot.


End file.
